On the heels of the successful launching of Marvel Studios with Iron Man, Marvel Studios goes green with their second film: The Incredible Hulk. An attempt at Hulk was made in 2003, but the film was unable to please the general public, which has led to this reboot of the series. Make no mistake, this reboot is very different and tries to give the fans the Hulk they wanted back in 2003.

While most found Ang Lee's approach to Hulk alienating in its more cerebral style, Louis Leterrier does the complete opposite. There is a lot more action in this new Hulk film! Hulk fights the army, an enhanced soldier, a fellow monster, and even attacks the sky! The editing of the film is also very fast paced. The action scenes have many quick cuts, and even many plot points are not stated by characters, but shown on documents or shown visually very quickly before moving along. It is a very fast moving film, but one that doesn't really ever get boring. There is some solid character work mixed. The movie clearly had the goal of "Hulk Smash" in mind from conception, but they don't ignore the story. Banner's desire to reuinite with the love of his love is handled very well, as is his core struggle of learning to gain a degree of control over the beast within. Many claim the movie has no story or doesn't care to develop it, but I simply don't agree.

Edward Norton is a good Banner, but he hardly defines the role the way Robert Downey Jr. defines Tony Stark. Robert Downey Jr. becomes Tony Stark to the audience on screen in Iron Man, while Edward Norton feels like the Edward Norton I've seen in other movies. That said, Norton clearly had passion for this project, despite the falling out he's had with Marvel. He has tremendous chemistry with Liv Tyler. Their romance is one of the strengths of the film. William Hurt also does a good job as General Ross. But, the stand out villain is Emil Blonksy. Tim Roth does a great job with this character, and I think they do a great job with Blonsky from a story perspective. He's almost like a junkie, and his drug is power. We see his drive for power grow as his mutation becomes more pronounced. We see him grow into the man that eventually becomes the a monstrous Abomination! He's very well developed and is a very effective villain.

The biggest issue the movie had was the effects. Hulk is hard to do in CGI, but in various places in the movie, he looks terrible. In the night scenes, Hulk looks good. The day scenes, totally fake. This is hard to overlook in several spots. It is hard to feel attached to a monster we the audience don't believe is really there. The overall design of the Abomination could have been better, too. Particularly Abomination's head and neck look sort of silly. Fortunately, the final showdown between Hulk and Abomination had some of the best effects of the film, and the fight itself is one of the better comic book hero vs villain fights in a movie yet.

The Incredible Hulk gets a lot of unfair criticism. While making the film more fast paced and action oriented was clearly the goal, it has some meaty stuff in the story department. While Norton's feud with Marvel no doubt has helped given the film negative buzz, the film itself doesn't deserve the backlash it has gotten over circumstances beyond its control. With a trong hero, supporting cast, and villain, The Incredible Hulk is one of the more underrated comic book based films.